Bottom Line: The Treo 270 is a useful gadget, but would it be a good replacement for your phone and dedicated PDA. If you need a lot of memory for multimedia applications then maybe its not for you. Read on to find out what we thought and how the 270 compares with the earlier 180 in our official review....

Using the phone is a little different form a standard cell
phone; the phone could either be dialed using one of the quick dial buttons,
the onscreen dial pad or the keyboard assigned buttons. After the number is
dialed you are greeted with the option to hang up or switch on the
speakerphone and upon connecting there is a mute button that is added. The
speaker phone was not only surprisingly loud but clear also, however, it is
not loud enough to stand above the noise of a 49db fan (the one on my case),
to hear clearly with the regular speaker in the flip lid one must place their
ear directly over the speaker, a minor nuisance but nothing worth crying
over.

If the Treo is laid to rest for an extended period, it
switches off the wireless mode to conserve on power, and all it takes to
reactivate it is a push of the power button. This may become annoying for
some as it requires approximately 20 seconds to synchronize with the service
provider before making a call, you could however disable that function.

In NY, T-Mobile doesnít have a reputation for great phone
service, but in all of the worst areas with my ATT cell phone I was still
able to make and receive calls on the Treo.

Quick Dial

Dialing

Connected

Upgradeability:

There is no available upgrade option so you are stuck with
16 Megs of onboard ram. This is my biggest gripe with the unit. I hate having
something this useful and canít upgrade up to add a few hundred megs of mp3ís
etc. Hopefully in the next iteration Handspring will address this and also
add the ability to record audio as a standard since the unit already has a
microphone and speaker.